Thursday, September 08, 2016

What a pity the stock is not public, because it's time to short AirBNB. They are no longer in the business of providing connecting people who need places to stay with people who have places to rent, they are now converged and in the business of social justice:

Airbnb has been under fire lately for instances of racism and discrimination exhibited by some hosts on the home-sharing platform. In order to combat that, Airbnb is making several positive changes to the platform and its company policies, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky sent in an email to hosts and guests this morning.

This includes guaranteeing short-term bookings for people who have been discriminated against, deemphasizing the use of user photos, blocking out availability if a host claims a space is taken when it really isn’t and working to increase the number of Instant Book listings, which don’t require hosts to approve specific guests, to one million by the beginning of 2017.

“Discrimination is the opposite of belonging, and its existence on our platform jeopardizes this core mission,” Chesky wrote. “Bias and discrimination have no place on Airbnb, and we have zero tolerance for them. Unfortunately, we have been slow to address these problems, and for this I am sorry. I take responsibility for any pain or frustration this has caused members of our community. We will not only make this right; we will work to set an example that other companies can follow.”

Airbnb’s issues with racism date back to at least late last year, when a Harvard study showed that renters with black-sounding names were less likely to receive a booking through the site. Then, in June, an Airbnb host in North Carolina canceled a booking on a black person and sent her a slew of racist insults. Shortly after that incident, Chesky said that racism is not allowed on the platform and Airbnb permanently banned the host.

Later that month, the Congressional Black Caucus urged Airbnb to take further action in addressing the issues of racism and discrimination on the company’s platform, citing how Title II of 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination in places like hotels and motels on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin.

Today, Laura Murphy, former head of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington D.C. office, laid out Airbnb’s game plan for tackling instances of racism and discrimination on the platform. Airbnb has been working with Murphy since June to ensure that the company is doing everything it can to fight racism.

"Even as the institutions have been invaded and coopted in the interests of social justice, they have been rendered unable to fulfill their primary functions. This is the great internal contradiction that the SJWs will never be able to positively resolve, just as the Soviet communists were never able to resolve the contradiction of socialist calculation that brought down their economy and their empire 69 years after Ludwig von Mises first pointed it out. One might call it the Impossibility of Social Justice Convergence; no man can serve two masters, and no institution can effectively serve two different functions. The more an institution converges towards the highest abstract standard of social and distributive justice, the less it is able to perform its primary function."
- from SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police

112 Comments:

What AirBnB is doing is fine if you want to be in the public accommodation business as a hotel company. If you want to be in the Gig economy as a private independent contractor supplying a service--well, you can't serve two masters.

I find it pretty funny that they think they can force private owners of homes to give up control over who can use the property. Companies like this are simply match making, how can they legally force anything on the property owners?

Not surprising, I recently booked a place to stay in Seattle through their service and nearly every host was a lesbian or gay couple. I haven't been to Seattle before, so maybe that is what the demographics are in that city, but it seemed kind of absurd when I was booking.

“Discrimination is the opposite of belonging, and its existence on our platform jeopardizes this core mission,”

The core mission is to provide home owners some extra income by skimming off the top of their mortgages by facilitating the operation. It is not to ensure people belong. WTF is wrong with the world? Translation: you must let poor minorities trash your house anytime they feel like it. Fuck, Nick Cole is a satirical prophet.

@3 Brian S.--How? Presumably because the host signs a contract with AirBnB that dictates the terms of service, including using the AirBnB website, reservation, and payments system. The host is free to associated with another reservation matching system, or go it alone. The legal force is called contract law.

So, an obscure service for people who like inviting strangers into their roofs is now telling these same goofballs they can't invite the nice kind of stranger that won't rape their daughter or kill their wife after ripping her clitorical hood off?

Their contracts must not include that now though, if the owners are rejecting potential renters. I certainly wouldn't agree to a contract that included anything that draconian. This sounds like empty PR posturing and virtue signaling to me. Otherwise it's suicide.

There's going to be backlash. Airbnb already has a problem with *ahem* 'troublesome' guests:Airbnb advertises that it will cover hosts for property damage up to a $1 million, via a program called the Host Guarantee. But when Bassini contacted Airbnb about it after the incident, a representative discouraged her from filing a claim, telling her she wouldn't be covered, she says.The good news is that, after being contacted by Business Insider, the company did the right thing by her, and promised to cover the damages if Bassini sends in the necessary paperwork.If more Airbnb hosts get their homes trashed by Defdog and his ho's Shaniqua, Lemonjello and Orangejello while shooting a rap (or ''Ho's be crazy'') video they and their insurance company are going to be hit and hit hard.Think twice about renting your place out via Airbnb.

I'm sure AirBnB will be just fine, what with all the properties the blue haired SJWs own. The only problem will be fitting in the downtrodden domestic travelers alongside all the lovable, huggable immigrants that every progtard on Facebook is always proclaiming they would be happy to have in their home.

I rent my house on AirBnB currently and make great money doing it. I've had to call their customer service several times, and thought they did an exceptional job. I think every one of the 6-7 people I've talked to there were white males. It's been literally the best customer service I've ever had with any company, since they tend to be knowledgeable beyond the department that they are responsible for.

curious how many property owners that use AirBnB are renting out their primary residence. I've only used it once, and I couldn't tell if it was the owner's home or 2nd home. There were rooms with kid's decorations, and the master bedroom had a large gun safe. It was a little strange, but it was a nice place and was an overall good experience.

I am just waiting for this sort of thing to hit dating websites. Every White woman will be forced to date black men. Every rich guy will be forced to date an obvious gold digger. Every young woman will be forced to date an old geezer. Can't discriminate. That's evil. So, just have a random number in your profile to describe you and let the computer assign you a "date". (buying popcorn futures).

"Discrimination is the opposite of belonging," and freedom is slavery, yeah. Without discrimination, we're tasteless. Expecting belonging to result from lack of discrimination would be like giving me food I hate and expecting me to eat more of it. Doesn't work that way.

What actually happens is that people stop wanting to be around other people, and they withdraw into cocoons. That's American culture right now.

I wonder if it would be legal to start a site just for people who were willing to admit they were racist when it comes to renting out their homes, and racist when it comes to renting a home. I am thinking the fair housing act gets authority to invade your home if you offer a room out to rent for a weekend.

It is delightful to watch how human nature reasserts itself whenever it's pressed down by intolerable ideological forces. The entire Civil Rights coup d'état is an effort to repress Whites' freedom of association.

If race-mingling were so wonderful -- or at least non-toxic, then why all those draconian laws and why all that Social Justice agitation in most obscure places to enforce race-mingling?

I hope I live long enough to see "Equal Opportunity" logos and footers become objects of curiosity like signs for segregated water fountains.

genericviews wrote:I wonder if it would be legal to start a site just for people who were willing to admit they were racist when it comes to renting out their homes, and racist when it comes to renting a home. I am thinking the fair housing act gets authority to invade your home if you offer a room out to rent for a weekend.

My wife has a small business that does turnovers for vacation rentals. Most of her clients use AirBNB. This past Summer the police were called on three of the properties, serious property damage took place on half a dozen and in every single case of overbooked properties (sleeps six but twenty show up) you can guess what the common denominator was. In every single instance. This is in a well to do vacation area about two hours from a major metro area. The costs associated with the problem guests were in the tens of thousands of dollars and in all but one instance the deposits taken were not enough to cover the costs.

I know, I know, just because it happened 100% of the time doesn't mean it happens 100% of the time. These were all exceptions to the rule that AirBNB will now impose.

In every instance, the person announced to me that they intended to break the "no party or event" rule, because they hadn't actually read my listing or its rules.

My employment has been continuously ruined by SJWs in the past, and AirBNB has been a big break for us. Unfortunately, I don't think there will be another service that allows for discrimination against those that announce their intentions to damage our property.

Short-sighted as usual. In no time, deposit or fee problems will be routinely challenged with "raciss!" and will lead to owners leaving to competitor sites.

This is more of a property-based business, not a renter-based one. If you don't have the listings people look elsewhere, and the home-based part-time entrepreneur will flock to where others are making dough.

At the risk of being a sperg, airbnb stock is not publicly-traded. But I imagine the investors who just dumped almost a billion dollars into it last month will not be happy with the inevitable collapse of their business as property owners go elsewhere.

If you buy something on "Gunbroker" the person you are doing business with automatically gets a rating based on the number of transactions they have completed and how well they went..Wouldn't it be possible for the owners of really nice properties to require a very high deposit from people who have low ratings?.If everything goes well the deposit is refunded and the renters rating improves. If it doesn't go well the opposite happens..Race wouldn't come up at all...

I don't disagree with your conclusion, but there is something that still confuses me. Apple has sold out to the same SJW philosophy, and yet they are making money hand over fist. Are they just so large and done so well in the past, gravity hasn't caught up to them yet?

"Using non-commercial property for commercial purposes is a loophole the size of the Holland Tunnel."

Are you implying that your home is not to be used for any "commercial" purposes whatsoever if it isn't zoned, like writing, inventing, thinking about your business, reading reports, accessing business files on the phone or home computer?

Zoning laws are to prevent say a factory from opening up in a neighborhood, not to prohibit anything that might be construed as "commercial" from taking place on your own property.

But hey... I'm that crazy guy that thinks businesses should be able to hire and fire and serve or refuse anyone for any reason.There are other issues with Airbnb. Are you a renter yourself? Your landlord may not think too highly of you making some extra scratch from tourists - like ''no sublet'' in the lease. Or, common in FL, your city may have a ''no short-term (<30 days) rentals in a residence'' law.Granted, I'm sure Airbnb has the usual disclaimers in tiny font somewhere on the site...

@5 It's not just Seattle. We looked at Airbnb places in the South and Midwest. Most seem to be owned by "loving" homosexuals.

We have had good luck with nice clean places and normal owners through VRBO. Also, some friends of ours that work in real estate regularly let out their mini-castle at $1,600-$2,500 per night without incident. Of course the price probably filters out Latrinea and her 22 hell spawn.

Bias and discrimination have no place on Airbnb, and we have zero tolerance for them.

Discrimination is a human right. It is THE human right. The ability to judge people and situations based on intelligence, experience, and our own moral conscience is what separates us from the beasts of the Jungle. Discrimination is what makes civilization possible. Without discrimination the standards of civilization can not be upheld. Then the deviants, the derelicts, the degenerates, the delinquents, the felons,and the foreigners have free reign to ignore those standards. Without standards civilization falls.

The prohibition of discrimination is the great tyranny of our time and requires an anti-American, anti-Constitutional police state to enforce. It obliterates the concept of private property and of freedom of association and free speech. Of course the Constitution, Western Civilization, private property, and our freedoms have always been the real targets. The prohibition of discrimination is merely a convenient weapon of mass destruction to tear them down.

Our society and our nation will never enjoy real progress or prosperity without repealing the prohibition of discrimination like the prohibition of alcohol was repealed. They bans do more damage then they are worth.

Reese MacGruder wrote:Our ability to choose to share our home with is a fundamental right as human beings.Nonetheless, the Great Congress has determined, and teh Supremest Of All Courts concurs, that once you are engaged in selling something, anything, you are become an agent of the state, that commercial activity and commercial property are fundamentally different from personal activity and personal property

Jonathan Bennett wrote:I don't disagree with your conclusion, but there is something that still confuses me. Apple has sold out to the same SJW philosophy, and yet they are making money hand over fist. Are they just so large and done so well in the past, gravity hasn't caught up to them yet?Convergence is a process, not an instantaneous thing. Apple still has a brand name that's worth something, and still provide products that I guess some people like.

They're jeopardizing that with every bit of news that I hear, but there's a certain inertia involved.

Am I the only person who thinks AirBNB is trying to buy a vaccination against ghetto lottery lawsuits and federal "rights" enforcement? Don't they envy the immunity from EEOO and DOJ investigations that Apple and Google seem to enjoy? This seems much more likely than their actually being "converged".

Apple has sold out to the same SJW philosophy, and yet they are making money hand over fist. Are they just so large and done so well

People might not be bothered by the gays on the subway commercial for IPhone 7, but the lack of a headphone port leaving people with either blue tooth or Apples proprietary headphones with limited battery life might catch up to them.

@61-The Seahawks ruined bthe Vikings' season last year (which deserves a stupid sports journalist nickname, like the Brrr Bowl), so I don't see why Vox would oppose it. Except the Vikings kicker shanking the gimme did it, not the Hawks, but who cares?

Ah, but the Hawks also ruined the Packers' 2014 season in spectacular fashion. That was one of my favorite games ever. So they're not all bad.

This is interesting. Where I live the anti-discrimination laws don't apply if you are taking someone into your house (i.e. you are living there are the same time).

From what I have read AirBnB listers would push back pretty heavily on anything that limited their ability to refuse reservations. They have been bitten way too many times. The whole point of AirBnB is that both parties can check each other out. That's why, if you read the detail, AirBnB is not really promising anything much. It's just window-dressing. AirBnB will make some grants to the rent-seeking SJW organisations and buy them off. Of course, the many AirBnB owners will now be open to the alt-right, having been mugged by reality.

@42 - Apple has sold out to the same SJW philosophy, and yet they are making money hand over fist. Are they just so large and done so well in the past, gravity hasn't caught up to them yet?

@43 - Exactly.

I'm probably one of the few regulars here who will defend Apple's technology. And even I will say that I have noticed a drop in quality control since Jobs passed away and Tim Cook implemented all sorts of SJW nonsense. QC seems to get worse with every major update.

@66 - The diversity propaganda we get here is overwhelming and I have every expectation of getting fired when I can't violate my conscience and call Bob a woman just because he says he is.

OMG you are literally a former German chancellor!

I am pursuing side businesses and restructuring my life so that I can bail before the hammer comes down.

Every time I think I'm unhappy with being self employed and want to go back to full time, I think about this. Hi, this is Bobbie. She is your new project manager. We hope that you will respect her pronoun choice.

Then again, it would be worth it if I could twist a corporation into demanding my coworkers address me as Supreme Dark Lord.

Two-years ago I told my friends that a cynical person could significantly degrade the quality of service or kill the popularity of Uber, AirBnb, Lyft and other sharing services by throwing disparate impact lawsuits, no matter how frivolous or lacking in real legal standing, at them. That or bringing the threat of an Al Sharpton style shame fest to their corporate HQ.

The data showed that, as entering college students, 23% of millennials identified as leaning far right, compared to 17% of Baby Boomers and 22% of Generation Xers.http://www.amren.com/news/2016/09/millennials-more-conservative-than-you-may-think/

For those of you that'd like an alternative, Thailand-headquartered agoda.com is going to be opening their hotel listings to individual AirBnB style vendors soonish. I can assure you pretty thoroughly anyone who suggested to Thai management that they had some interest in combating individuals' right to discriminate would be considered to be making a remarkably stupid joke...

Going where anti-discrimination has never gone before. Government has never tried to ban discrimination in choice of room-mates/housemates. Democrats surely want to take it there, but it has always been recognized as ... Insane. People sharing houses and apartments are looking for people they can regard as friends. It is perfectly legit and common to specify gay vs straight, athletic v nerdy, counter-culture, Christian, atheist, etc.

That has changed in recent years as Craigslist became dominant, since they limit how people are allowed to advertise rentals, including shared spaces, but there has never been any suggestion that they would try to stop people from actually choosing housemates on whatever grounds they want.

Now AirBnB is going to try to coerce its clients into taking people into their houses who they do NOT feel, on the basis of a brief profile, that they are likely to feel friendly towards. That's going to be a dealbreaker for many.

"Every time I think I'm unhappy with being self employed and want to go back to full time, I think about this. Hi, this is Bobbie. She is your new project manager. We hope that you will respect her pronoun choice."

@18 The primary product the sharing economy offers is protection against default, so no, the people renting their homes are not going to be impacted by a guest failing to pay. Guests have to pay up front when they book. AirBnB then holds the money and earns interest and releases it to the host after the trip is completed.

dc.sunsets You're ridiculous. I work on the placement of AirBnB's policy for hosts. The whole reason that policy exists is because everyone is well aware that their homeowners (or personal auto) coverage suspends once the guest is on the property. I'm sure some fraud is attempted but it's no more common than a gazillion other types of insurance fraud.

That Harvard study- why did they go with names instead of profile photos, I wonder? Names select as much for class as for race in the U.S. It's well known in insurance that the poor are bad risks, of course. There's a big controversy over using credit scores to rate personal auto policies because it's allegedly a proxy for race, which is illegal. Note no one is arguing that blacks are not in fact worse risks for personal auto; it's just illegal to price your policies accordingly.

All these hipster "model of the future" business like AirBNB, Uber, the food truck army, etc., all were completely swamped with a white hipster SJW iPhone-wielding, Prius-driving customer base initially.

And the people at these companies were fellow-travellers.

Don't get me wrong, the SJWs are horrible people, but they do have an upside in that they usually are trustworthy customers. They make good Uber passengers (if you can avoid getting into politics or religion with them), they make model AirBNB'ers.

But now the businesses have grown way outside that demographic box. You got gangbangers making drug runs on Uber in places around here. You got people doing porn shoots at AirBNB properties.

We have reality crashing down on all the SJW idealism that animated all these models before. They are going to be challenged and quite surprised when they discover it was they, all along, not us, who were living in an echo chamber.

But then they'll take their one possible course of action reliably once again. They will deny reality and stick their heads in the sand.

dc.sunsets You're ridiculous. I work on the placement of AirBnB's policy for hosts. The whole reason that policy exists is because everyone is well aware that their homeowners (or personal auto) coverage suspends once the guest is on the property. I'm sure some fraud is attempted but it's no more common than a gazillion other types of insurance fraud.

I understood that as business model fraud, not individual homeowner fraud.

A hotel would have insurance to cover damage by guests. AirBnB provides a similar type of service, but doesn't/didn't pay the cost for that.

Less cost is more profit, but the risk is still there, and it is borne by someone.

Homeowners are wising up and AirBnB is adjusting in response, but they may still be underpaying the costs given the risks; all the more so now that they are under SJW convergence.

Satisfactory voluntary home sharing just took backseat to not being rayciss.

dc.sunsets wrote:FWIW, most homeowners policies are actually low. Most people could be six figures short in the event of a total loss.Not only that, but the general rule of homeowner's policies is ''one claim, one time''. Even if it pays out, it means cancellation. Then you're stuck looking for a new policy - probably at higher rates.Unknown wrote:If your place is ruined by an AirBnB renter does the company compensate you?

Didn't think so.See @14, They claim they have a $1million insurance policy against renter damages but obviously like any other insurance they will do anything legit or not to avoid paying out. In the example above they were threatened by negative publicity by Business Insider before they (supposedly) honored the claim.Enough legit bad renter claims and either their self-insurance fund will run dry or their insurance carrier will make continuing to operate impossible.And the insurance is only a 'fig leaf' to help avoid lawsuits - and local government regulations/bans.That's the same problem Uber has, they want to play fast and loose with the laws/insurance issues that existing competing businesses have to live with.

""Even as the institutions have been invaded and coopted in the interests of social justice, they have been rendered unable to fulfill their primary functions."

It looks to me like AirBnB is simply executing it's right to run its business as its likes. It chooses to remove racists from using its platform. It clearly believes that this will hurt its business in no way. Why should it do otherwise. The fact is, it's highly unlikely that there are enough racists using its site to rent rooms and homes that preventing them from expressing their racism on the site will hurt business. Maybe someone will start a business called "Racism Rentals". Let's see how that works out.

But I imagine the investors who just dumped almost a billion dollars into it last month...

How could they possibly make productive use of that much money...

Anyway, if I ever built a competitor to AirBnB, it would require renters to log in with their Facebook account. The landlords could peruse the FB history to see if they wanted to risk opening the door for them.

...Seahawks...

Here's what Doug Baldwin - the ringleader of whatever is going to happen - said about it:

"To express a desire to bring people together, our team will honor the country and flag in a pregame demonstration of unity."

I have no idea what they have planned, or how it will come across. I guess we'll find out Sunday.

The vile killer, who murdered 13 women and tried to kill seven more in the late 70s, has now sought protection from Muslim gangs.

A source told the Daily Star: "HMP Frankland is ruled by gangs and you are either in a white gang, black gang or Asian gang.

“If you are a child killer, rapist or a mass murderer, the only gang who are going to let you in are the Muslims but you have to convert to Islam.”

Imagine a Muslim Gang turning away someone because they aren't Muslim. Sound mono cultural. But the good news is mass murders have a special place in Islam having followed in Muhammad's footsteps quite precisely.

BnB multi cultics. You can check in anytime you like. Getting out is the really true multic cultic dilemma.

I have a friend in Jerusalem who started using AirBnB a couple years ago to supplement her income, and it made a YUGE difference in her life. The guests have tended to be (clean, orderly, neat) white Europeans of various nationalities. Israel is far enough away from the US that she can perhaps continue to use their service without worrying about dindus, but who knows. My understanding is that they take a surprisingly small cut of transactions, which is to their credit.

These kind of sites have ridiculously low barriers to entry. There are lots of competitors (I even did some contract work recently for a small family business that specializes in Israeli short term rentals). And once you go on the VC carousel, you're stuck with an extremely high overhead structure.

According to Quora (https://www.quora.com/How-many-employees-does-Airbnb-have-1), they had almost 2400 employees as of last November. That's less than Twitter (seriously, what do 4000 workers do there?!) but still very high. Their overhead is likely to increase even further as the dindus swarm listings and damage everything in site.

Responding to the mayor’s inflammatory comments, anti-racism organization LICRA announced on Twitter that it has submitted a complaint to the Prosecutor’s Office, accusing Ménard of hate speech.

LICRA president (((Alain Jakubowicz))) said the mayor’s comments “beat the record of shame and stupidity,” Express reported.

Andrew Anglin, TRS and dozens of other sites have thousands of examples of (((your tribe))) who make up only 6 million at most in the 700 million Gentile White West denouncing any and all White sovereignty anywhere.

Speaking of VC, even today, Craig's List has "30+" employees, according to Wikipedia (and is written in Perl!!!). You can become a global brand with modest (even minuscule) revenue and size, as long as you avoid it.

ABBy: Progressives and liberals are as racist as anyone. It shows when they pay premium prices for houses in White neighborhoods, and put their kids in private schools when the local schools are too diverse. Now go to bed, Troll.

I understand that you the 99%, we all look the same, and even though (((Alain))) doesn't speak for me, in your eyes he does. No real need to bring up such things here. I'm pretty sure it's totally off topic. I also don't care (or, if you prefer, thanks for pointing it out to me).

If you can't choose with whom to associate, you don't have the right of free association. These things fix themselves. Either the companies go under or the nation does. Although the baby does often get tossed with the bathwater.

Are you familiar with the fact that your insurance policy is a contract & if they can invoke any deviation on your part they can stiff you?

Not only that but its worth it after a loss to ask for an new copy of your policy, claiming you must have lost it in the destruction to see if they send you a different policy so you can sue after producing the original.

Finally: "In the study, hosts who rejected potential black renters were only able to find a replacement guest 35% of the time. Researchers said they lost between $65 and $100 for each rejection."

Between $65 and $100 for each rejection? That's a bargain.

Could it have anything, anything at all, to do with each culture having different standards of cleanliness and respect for others' property? And a higher standard of both is assumed to be preferable?

Anecdote: I have a black acquaintance (private college English department head) who owns rental property in a predominantly black neighborhood. (He lives in suburban Whitopia himself.) His tenants have all been black, and his experience sounds uniformly nightmarish. It's hard to lose money on rental property, but he has. And he *really* doesn't like to talk about it.

Indeed, what a pity that it's not public. I am an air BnB host, I got that letter and I was like....whaaaat? My prediction: AirBnb will be supplanted within 5 years if not sooner. I could go on a rant but I won't, suffice to say that their treatment of hosts when there are issues is not that great. Our place was recently vandalized by an AirBnb guest, supposedly they do background checks and all of that but I seriously doubt it, this person probably has a record as long as my arm. Had doubts about, but was comforted by AirBnb's screening process - no more. Their insurance is supposed to cover up to $1 mil in damages but they're shutting up and not talking to us. Probably the lawyers are working overtime this weekend. This can't be a one time incident.

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